


Cursus Sitatus

by cognomen



Category: King Arthur (2004)
Genre: Centaur AU, Gen, Platonic Relationships, friendship fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-12-13
Packaged: 2018-02-25 02:31:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 13,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2605298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Monsters. Tall, imposing creatures with fierce, foreign faces, carrying weapons. Worst of all, they seem to nearly be men. They do not have the standard four, but a terrifying six limbs. A horse's body - or so like a horse as to not matter - and a man's head, shoulders, and torso.</p><p>They were married together at the waist and shoulder like nothing Galahad had seen outside of statuary or dreamed in his darkest nightmare. </p><p>He knew them from his childhood, from the tales his parents had threatened him and his siblings with. Stories of horse-men - centaurs - who would come and steal them if they did not listen or obey. He expects flashing, pointed teeth, clawed hands, sharp cloven hooves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Day One

They march north for so long that Galahad is sure it's deliberate. The Soldiers who collected them seem confident on the straight, square stone roads but he could not have found his way even if he had dared to run - even if his feet would have carried him.

His tribe were farmers, shepherds, and they had not often traveled. Though Galahad was hardy - and just tall enough to be passed for his older brother - he was unused to so much walking.

He cannot help his limp.

He already hates this Soldier's life, one so-far surrounded by strangers. Rough men, scared boys who were older than he was. And marching.

Marching until his feet were covered in blisters and every step was such agony he could not think to do anything but follow.

Dimly, he is aware when another band of new recruits join them, but it is only when his fellows raise an outcry of protest does he realize anything is amiss.

"Monsters," a boy near him hisses - a blonde boy, fierce looking. Solid. Galahad wonders what _he_ has to be afraid of. 

Following the boy's gaze, he discovers his own fear quickly enough. His heart sinks and he finds a readiness for attack that he didn't know existed within him. His hand goes to where the knife is hidden beneath his clothes - a small, bronze thing that was the only equipment his family had spare to send with him. 

Monsters. Tall, imposing creatures with fierce, foreign faces, carrying weapons. Worst of all, they seem to nearly be men. They do not have the standard four, but a terrifying six limbs. A horse's body - or so like a horse as to not matter - and a man's head, shoulders, and torso.

They were married together at the waist and shoulder like nothing Galahad had seen outside of statuary or dreamed in his darkest nightmare. 

He knew them from his childhood, from the tales his parents had threatened him and his siblings with. Stories of horse-men - centaurs - who would come and steal them if they did not listen or obey. He expects flashing, pointed teeth, clawed hands, sharp cloven hooves.

But something isn't quite like the picture lined up by the old crib stories. Only the recruits seem concerned at all. The Roman soldiers sent to collect them barely react, and Galahad notices that the creatures seem to be led by their own escort of armed legionnaires. 

No attack comes. The monsters fall in beside them as if they belong, and Galahad realizes that there was no danger. Two parties with the same goal have simply become one. 

The centaurs were also under Roman rule, Galahad remembers, belatedly. Emperor Constantine had conquered them, much like the Sarmatians. He had begun to dismiss the tale - and the entire idea of centaurs - as unreal. A myth, like the stories of Heracles. He had, of course, never seen one before.

With the terror fading, Galahad finds instead suspicion and curiosity. He is still staring - and he discovers they have neither pointed teeth nor wicked claws. The press of bodies around him nudges him back into action.

The column begins moving again, though it is not as tightly woven as before.The young men - mostly Sarmatians, from the various scattered tribes - avoid the centaurs instinctively. They are as nervous and mistrustful as Galahad of tempting fate by getting too near. 

Galahad does not want to get closer. Something about them seems isolated, proudly alone, but he cannot stop looking. 

They are not so nightmarish as he had believed, anyway. At least not these - they must be no older than the boys they moved along side of. And - Galahad realizes with a start - why not? They must also be recruits from far to the south, moving well beyond any nomadic tribe's need to wander. They are recruits too, sent so far north to keep the Emperor's peace along the wall.

It means they are as expendable as the Sarmatians. It strikes some chord in Galahad that he hadn't expected. Were the Sarmatians really so poorly off in the eyes of the empire? Their inclusion was a punishment to their ancestors, long dead.

They must be seen, amongst the Romans, as equal to these. So Galahad looks, knowing that he is perceiving himself through Roman eyes. 

They are varying in appearance; some blonde, some russet-haired, some darker. It has no correlation Galahad can see to their nether halves. Whatever curse or god's gift or magic had made them, it had its own logic. He sees dark haired centaurs with white fur, or blondes with bay coats. 

For all that they could be two creatures, they have enviable grace. It's all one continuous motion, running down the dramatic length of their spines from a toss of their heads to a flick of their tails. 

They are clad not only over their chests, but slung over their rumps and withers with barding and packs - some with joined chain or leather armor. 

Their own pack animals, Galahad supposes. At the least, they have not been saddled.

He is pushed closer and closer to the edge of the column, perhaps as much by gravitation as being pushed by his fellows. They seem to be trying to keep at least one person between themselves and perceived danger.

The sudden shove when Galahad lingers too long throws him off balance, and the sudden shock to his aching, raw feet takes him all the way down.

He hisses when he hits, crushed further beneath the weight of his pack of provisions. He finds himself in the dirt, blushing hotly at his own stupidity. Having just marveled at the grace of the centaurs he feels the loss of any he had of his own acutely.

Galahad takes a deep breath, trying to gather himself. He is aware of bodies passing on either side, motion and proximity. His feet throb and he stubbornly does not want to get back onto them.

He starts to flinch away when a body comes nearer than he expects, afraid of being trampled. Instead, a hand falls steadying on his shoulders - high up by his neck, and then reaches lower still, offered palm-out.

The wrist is wrapped in scraps of leather and fabric, frayed ends dangling and hung with beads. Galahad takes it, finding himself able to lean all of his weight onto his steady benefactor.

His feet still pain him sharply when he gets onto them, and he can feel the slippery slick in his socks of burst blisters.

Galahad looks up - and then up and up, fear and realization twisting together in his gut in a sudden wash of almost-terror.

This close he can see the seamless join of muscle at the hip, the line where fur ends and skin begins, neat as that. He must crane his neck to look up nearly the entire length of the centaur's torso to see his face.

"You'll fall behind," the centaur says, his voice rich and deep, strangely accented. Will's first impression of the man's face is that it is nearly hidden in the shaggy wreck of his hair, half braids and half simply tangled together. Dark eyes are underscored with blue marks on high, pronounced cheekbones. 

Galahad struggles to find an answer, but is distracted by the swish of the centaur's gray tail against his own flank.

The thought that the hand on his own and that flicking tale belong to the same creature stops Galahad cold with a sense of such strangeness his mind seems unable to envelop the concept. Words die on his tongue, unspoken. 

Any hint of openness in the centaur's dark eyes closes and he leaves Galahad to his own devices when he is sure that Galahad will stay on his feet.

Then he moves on, a contrast of dark hair and a greying-out body, his tail making such a sharp gesture as he passes that the tips - as unkempt as his hair - sting Galahad's skin enough for him to feel the ghosts of for days.


	2. Day Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You have been issued quarters, equipment, food," the Legionnaire tells them, a half-ragged lot of tribal boys that keep themselves carefully separated from the centaurs.
> 
> Tristan notices that the man carefully addresses the middle of the recruits, a space occupied mostly by Sarmatians.

"You have been issued quarters, equipment, food," the Legionnaire tells them, a half-ragged lot of tribal boys that keep themselves carefully separated from the centaurs.

Tristan notices that the man carefully addresses the middle of the recruits, a space occupied mostly by Sarmatians.

He has been issued these things - his choice of a shared tent or communal stables, the Romans content to cater to him by halves. He is not alone - all of his kind are faced with the choice of housing themselves as men or animals without the allowance that they weren't truly either.

Tristan chose the stables. It is cold, drafty in the evenings and smells of horse. For insensitive human noses it must seem the same as centaur.

If they can smell anything over their own spice-musk stench. 

"You have been allowed to rest," The Legionnaire continues, posture straight.

It has been too much of a scramble for rest, but they have not been set to hard labor. Disdainfully, Tristan wonders if they will expect him to train to harness, with how heavy a load he had been given to bear back to this camp.

"Now you will be assigned to units and put into training."

The Sarmatian boys - they all seem young to Tristan's eyes but men do not mature as quickly as their own race, and endure far longer in the leggy, gangling late-colt stage.

Half of them are as yet un-bearded. No centaur of such youth would be permitted to leave his family for warfare.

Men were thirstier for it, for destruction and conquering in general. It was one thing Tristan liked about them.

The rest of them, he was not as fond of. They were blind and deaf to scents and nearly as much to sight and sound. They were two things for certain: plentiful and ambitious. You could not count on any one man to hold other traits in common with any given other but those two.

He listens with half his attention as the man assigns Sarmatians together into a unit, some raising a clamor over separation from friends and family members.

Tristan has already felt that separation. He had been born out of phase in his herd, considered both a boon and a trickster - it was more common for their women to foal in groups, and raise their children in a far more social setting. He had not had any herd-brothers or sisters of the same age,but the younger ones had adopted him as their own.

He hopes he will not have to see them come here. Perhaps by then, the Wall will be well enough defended.

Perhaps by then, Rome would give up her need to own everything it could touch.

A third of the Sarmatians - perhaps fifteen boys - remains behind peculiarly when the Legionnaire begins to divide the centaur into units. To this, Tristan pays more attention.

He has learned a little of his fellows on their journey - mostly that they were far more Romanized than his own far-flung tribe. They spoke flawless, un-accented Latin and had allowed themselves to be covered as if they needed more modesty than the warm coat of fur they were blessed with. 

He wore his own with deliberate loose carelessness, unwilling to tighten uncomfortable straps around places he had never desired constriction.

With pride, he had kicked the man trying to shoe him - twice so the lesson would stick. He did not need iron shoes to make his steps heavy and ringing, and his hooves were hard enough to face even the great paved vias - though he had not seen one for miles around the encampment. 

His name is not amongst those divided into a new unit. He supposes the rest of them will be appended to existing units in ones and twos to fill holes combat has left in the ranks.

"Those of you left standing here will form the last unit," the legionnaire says. He senses the clamor before it fully arises and lets the voices swell in protest without trying to speak over them.

Tristan casts his eyes over the remaining centaur; ten is not enough for a unit. Then, he realize that with the remaining Sarmatians, it is very nearly enough. 

Serving along such slow, loud - _scared_ boys?

A glance in their direction reveals that the Sarmatians are not any happier. 

"You can't make us serve with them!" The voice is raspy, for a youth. The owner is round, not with excess flesh but barrel chested like men could be. His hair is shaved nearly to his skull, enhancing the roundness of his head on his short neck.

Tristan cannot stop the irritable lift and firm drop of one hind leg, agitation running beneath his skin until the stomp expels it. It makes a hollow sound on the trampled dirt of the assembly grounds.

A sudden pain courses up the nerves from the sensitive sole of his hoof and he lifts the limb again - had he stepped on something sharp? A glance at the ground reveals nothing.

"You will serve as you are assigned. The emperor wills it. You all belong to the Imperial Roman Army, and you are all Soldiers. To disobey-" the legionnaire pauses at the renewed uproar, holding his hands up palms-out for silence.

"To disobey is treason, to refuse is desertion," the man says. "Will you do such dishonor to your families by refusing to serve?" 

" _You_ serve with them!" The voice is higher, more wavering - as if perhaps it had not intended to be quite so loud.

Tristan recognizes the small, curly haired boy who had stumbled while gawking at him. 

The ungrateful boy with no thanks for his assistance back to his feet. He starts to make another impatient beat with his left rear, but pain stops him and he is forced to stand with the limb lifted, a shooting pain warning him off trying to put weight on it.

"I already do," the legionnaire answers curtly. "The army - the whole of it - is all the family you boys have now."

Silence answers that at last. 

"Embrace the whole of it or go crying to the emperor and face his displeasure for disobeying. Decide quickly. Then report to Artorius."

Their commander is standing at the back of the field - a young man hardly older than they. But he is army bred, Tristan suspects. He carries himself straight and stiff. His bronze helmet is tucked beneath one arm and he looks straight ahead. He will not beg their respect but command it.

No one goes to lay a case before the emperor.


	3. Day Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is something wrong with one of the centaurs. Galahad had felt something nagging at him when he'd looked at them, something his father had mentioned once, a long time ago, or some instinct from his younger days tending to the animals they had owned.
> 
> It's the one who had helped him - they caught each other looking a lot, to his chagrin. Galahad is sure he had offended the - _man? stallion?_ \- when he had not said any words of thanks.

There is something wrong with one of the centaurs. Galahad had felt something nagging at him when he'd looked at them, something his father had mentioned once, a long time ago, or some instinct from his younger days tending to the animals they had owned.

It's the one who had helped him - they caught each other looking a lot, to his chagrin. Galahad is sure he had offended the - _man? stallion?_ \- when he had not said any words of thanks.

He isn't sure that's it; perhaps the centaur just senses him staring and looks back. Maybe he's just as fascinated by men as Galahad is by centaurs.

Regardless, something has pulled at Galahad's conscious thoughts. There is something wrong with him. 

Not that he is really too different from the other centaur - though he clearly is.

Dagonet and Gawain are clearly used to men. Friendly, and carefully so. The others are at least willing to be personable amongst their own. Though Galahad has only spoken to them in passing, it's clear to see how much of Rome is in them. By that standard, it’s equally clear there was a division within the centaur. 

Though that isn't what draws Galahad's eye to one in particular, even if he seems on the clear extreme of 'wild'. 

Thinking on it, Galahad must look the same in comparison to Romans - dark, wild hair, a slight frame and a wiry build. Hardly suited to this, amongst the fairer members of their legion. He feels some kinship then, to this son of Centauros.

What draws his eyes, when he at last puts the pieces together in his own mind, is the left rear leg. More often than not he sees it cocked, when the centaur is at rest - and it's this that draws his sharper attention.

At first it is simply curiosity. Galahad wonders if it simply indicates ease in centaurs as it does in men, or pain, as it does in horses.

The latter seems to be the case - the centaur is slow, favors the hoof, and Galahad catches him twice trying to reach it. It is, apparently, impossible for him to see the bottom of his own back hoof, at least without severe contortions. 

So Galahad watches, a question he never would have asked forming slowly in his mind. How did centaurs see to all those hooves?

He catches the answer finally, at the end of practice - marching only, and for the second day in a row - when he spies Gawain asking assistance of another. A small knife flashes casually, a clot of mud and stones falls from the hoof. Just as a horse's. 

He knows - at least he thinks he does, from what tales he has heard that were not intended to scare children - that they are creatures of kinship and family.

But not this one. Instead, he places less weight on the limb, stubbornly standing on the toe when called upon to perform in drills.

Galahad's own feet hurt in sympathy - as well as remembered pain, though the blisters have begun to toughen over to callous instead. 

It takes all of his courage to approach but at least the other does not simply turn and walk away, instead waiting. Or standing his ground.

Galahad takes a deep breath and looks all the way up into the blank features. While he reads no welcome, it isn't utterly forbidding either. After a moment of study, Galahad realizes he looks tired.

"You helped me," Galahad starts, before he realizes how much like an accusation it sounds. He hesitates, then offers his hand. "Thank you. I know I should have said it before."

The centaur regards his extended hand for a long moment, and Galahad wonders if he had misjudged.

"You're welcome," he says at last, taking Galahad's hand to shake. The look of suspicion does not fully fade however.

"I'm Galahad," he offers, hoping to make a trade in names. "And I saw-"

Galahad isn't sure how to put it, instead gesturing at the cocked hind limb.

The centaur immediately shifts, forcing the foot flat.

"I can have a look at it," Galahad continues, knowing he is being stubborn. "Since you can't reach?"

The centaur takes a deep breath of his own then, and the stern expression fades slowly. He gives in in the face of increasing pain and continued solitude.

"May I?" Galahad asks.

"I'm Tristan," the centaur allows. "Do you know what you're-"

"Well enough," Galahad promises. "Just like horses, right?"

Belatedly, he realizes it isn't the best way he could have put it. Tristan, at least, does not seem upset.

"Like the horses," he agrees with a sigh.

Galahad displays his palms and then settles them on the firm, muscled haunch as he would with a horse. 

It is warm and sleek, just as it always has been and Galahad slides his hands down the curve, over shivering skin before he curls his fingers reassuringly at the hock - strange to think of it attached to Tristan. 

He does not have to pull at the ankle like he does with his own mount - Tristan shifts his weight and picks the limb up for Galahad to see.

The hoof is dirty, packed with sand and mud, but the hoof wall is uncracked and seems healthy. 

Carefully Galahad balances the hoof between his knees to free his hands and give Tristan a little stability. 

He touches the frog of the hoof first, finding it dark and plump, and he runs his thumbs over it earning a sudden shift from his patient and a stinging flick of tail against his face.

"Sore?" he asks, amused to have a chance of being answered. He has never been assisted by his charge in diagnosing a lameness before.

"No," Tristan says. "Ticklish. The ache is deeper."

Galahad reaches into his pouch and takes out his hoof knife, rendering the hoof clean and seeking along the join of the sole to the hoof wall until he finds it - a stone that has cut its way between.

"It's a big one," he warns.

"Yes," Tristan agrees, irritable. 

"It'll have to drain," Galahad warns again, bracing the curve of the knife under the embedded stone.

Tristan switches his tail again, but not hard enough to catch Galahad's face. 

Unable to stall anymore, Galahad cuts the rock free, and watches the flow of bright blood and milky fluid that follows. It does not turn dark as it would if the infection was deeper, but it does drain for a long time. Galahad wishes he had thought to bring warm water to wash it out.

"Does it hurt?" he asks, stupidly, but he had always wondered how much of their hooves horses could feel.

"Less each second," Tristan confesses.

Galahad smiles, glad. He carefully uses the back edge of the knife to feel for signs of further abscess. The hoof itself feels hot to his touch, a sign of the swelling within, but he finds no other sign of infection. 

"I don't suppose I could convince you to stand in a bucket with salted water for half an hour?" Galahad asks, releasing the hoof. It is an attempt at levity.

Tristan, unlike Galahad's other charges, does not immediately set the limb down. He gives it a shake, flinging a few drops of bloody discharge wild, unable to see the result.

"Some acetum would not be unwelcome," Tristan allows, and he gives a hopeful too-human glance up at Galahad.

"I can try," he finds himself offering. He hadn't expected to be asked for anything more, but he supposes he now has the centaur's blood on his hands - albeit thinned and from a welcome cut.

Tristan does not say 'please' as a Roman would, but simply nods. Galahad embarks on his quest.


	4. Day Twelve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Galahad does not have that same conviction that because animals do not show pain, they feel less of it. He does not have the conviction that because centaurs resemble them, they have more in common with horses than men. Despite his initial fear, which Tristan had once seen written clearly across the young, soft features, he seems able to set aside forms and accept Tristan as worth knowing.
> 
> He had not realized how welcome that would seem. He had not guessed that he could feel pleasure in his heart to see a boy carrying a bucket. But he knows the water will be warm and lessen the decreasing ache in his foot, and he knows the company will be quiet and pleasant.

Galahad touches him gently every time. Something about that means Tristan keeps allowing it. He has never found men to be gentle - the soldiers who had come to collect him had been rough, checking his soundness for duty with hands that were as uncaring on his body as their own mounts. 

Galahad does not have that same conviction that because animals do not show pain, they feel less of it. He does not have the conviction that because centaurs resemble them, they have more in common with horses than men. Despite his initial fear, which Tristan had once seen written clearly across the young, soft features, he seems able to set aside forms and accept Tristan as worth knowing.

He had not realized how welcome that would seem. He had not guessed that he could feel pleasure in his heart to see a boy carrying a bucket. But he knows the water will be warm and lessen the decreasing ache in his foot, and he knows the company will be quiet and pleasant.

In a few more days it will not bother him at all. 

"Tristan," Galahad greets, out of breath. He sets down the bucket at Tristan's side and reaches into his pocket, producing a green apple. 

Tristan glances at the offering in his palm, and then deliberately shifts to put his injured foot into the soak.

"Come now," Galahad laughs. "I've seen that you like them."

"Is it a bribe?" Tristan asks, finding amusement rather than insult. Galahad is watching him - curiously, rather than with the contempt he sees on some others. 

"I will trade you for an answer," Galahad suggests.

Tristan takes the apple - it is fresh, sour-tart and cool when he bites into it. Blissful, like the soak on his tired foot. 

Galahad produces a second apple, which he sections with the small knife he carried, a certain country-raised carelessness in the action he makes with it. It is the same he had used to pull the stone from Tristan's hoof, though cleaned since. 

"What is the question?" Tristan asks, when they are both nearly halfway done with their treats.

"Why didn't you ask Dagonet or Gawain - or any of the other centaur - for help?" Galahad asks. "You'd have lamed yourself if the infection went deeper."

Tristan is surprised - and a little shamed by the question. He had expected something of childish curiosity.

Instead, the question is - personal. A friendly curiosity.

Tristan has another bite of apple.

"They're strangers," he explains.

"I'm a stranger," Galahad answers quickly.

Tristan's tail switches but he smiles. It is a man's understanding.

"You owed me a favor."

Galahad does not have so quick a return for that, though it is clear he understands it. Tristan sees him absorb it, Galahad's blue eyes turning serious and considerate. 

He is pretty, for one so young - or seemingly young. Tristan guesses him to be perhaps three years the junior of the other knights. No one would ever admit it - he had been taken and would serve his term like the rest.

"I didn't ask for your help," Galahad continues at last. The tone is soft - curious, not accusing. 

"But you needed someone's," Tristan answers, "and I was there. Your brothers wouldn't risk getting closer."

Galahad hums a thoughtful noise. It’s true. Though now, with days of exposure the Sarmatians seem less wary of their counterparts, they still are not wholly welcoming. 

It isn't a perfect parable, Tristan knows: his own unwillingness to be the first vulnerable around unknowns and the deep fear the Sarmatians have. One was passed down from generations before.

They finish their apples quietly, and Tristan believes Galahad takes his exact meaning anyway. For a moment, there is conspiracy and brotherhood.

Galahad throws away the apple core, a careless toss that shows power in an untrained way - he has strength from farming, but not yet from soldiering.

Then he insinuates his hand gently at the slope of Tristan's ass - a familiarity that Galahad did not see as amiss. It is a strange intimacy, when he slides his cool fingers all the way down the curve of his leg - haunch to hock to heel, to lift it from the bucket.

"I think that's the last soak," Galahad observes, heedless of his own action, and so Tristan tries not to place any meaning to it.

"You're sound again," Galahad proclaims, as Tristan shakes some of the dampness from the hoof and then places it again.

"Thank you," he says.

Galahad smiles - bright, youthful. He looks nearly a boy with his curls and round cheeks - but in his eyes there is the seriousness of age. 

Tristan offers his hand - the first true clasp of friendship he'd put forth - and Galahad accepts. His grip is firm and his smile unfading.


	5. Day Twenty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Just leave it," Bors growls, when Galahad alerts him to his find. "Its momma is around somewhere and she'll get mad as yer Mam if you touch it."
> 
> Galahad looks down at the small, quiet lump of gray fluff on the cold ground.
> 
> "I haven't seen her come for it, and it's been hours," he protests.

"Just leave it," Bors growls, when Galahad alerts him to his find. "Its momma is around somewhere and she'll get mad as yer Mam if you touch it."

Galahad looks down at the small, quiet lump of gray fluff on the cold ground.

"I haven't seen her come for it, and it's been hours," he protests.

Bors laughs, not unkindly, and gives Galahad a thump between the shoulder blades that rattles his teeth. 

"You and your need to mother injured animals. Are you sure what parts you've got in your nethers?"

"Bors is right," Lancelot agrees. "To an extent. Nature will take its course. Hawks are plentiful, Galahad, and food scarce enough.

"Be glad we will have one less competitor for rabbits."

They leave him, certain he will listen to sense. Galahad wants to, as he looks down at the weakened baby bird. It barely resembles what it will grow to be - all white-gray down and big belly, big beak, ungainly feet. The dark, piercing eyes are there, heartbreakingly dim with hunger.

Galahad scoops up the hapless creature, and finds it weighs nearly nothing at all, and feels even more delicate than it looks.

"How ever did you survive the fall?" Galahad asks it - but there is no obvious trauma. The legs are straight and unbroken, the stumpy wings folded against the round body.

It does not answer but to turn its head and glare at him out of one eye.

Then the beak opens, red and wide, and a ferocious squeaking of demand issues forth with such tenacity that Galahad nearly drops it. For a moment, he is unable to think under such an assault to his ears.

The sound imparts a certain urgency in him, however, and Galahad finds himself rushing through camp in seek of Tristan, men and centaur looking up at the calamitous peeping of his passage. 

Impact nearly takes him off his feet, but hands catch and steady him, sparing him and his charge the fall. 

"What bird have you stolen from its mother?" The voice is Dagonet's, the glossy furred side that Galahad crashed into is also.

"Have you seen Tristan?" he asks Dagonet. He earns a confused look and realizes it isn't the only one. Gawain and some of their legion stand nearby, interrupted at sword practice by the noise.

"He was at archery," Gawain volunteers, when Dagonet has no answer. "With the commander, last I saw."

"Thank you," Galahad answers, nearly shouting to be heard, even as he finally manages to muffle some of the shrill peeping by cupping his hand gently over the hatchling's head.

He hurries for the indicated field, partitioned for archery and with lanes and targets set up for practice.

Tristan is still there, his form tall and focused, lower half braced while he draws a bow and aims it. Heedless that he might be interrupting and spurred on by the frantic sounds that inspire his urgency, Galahad finds himself nearly running, as if time - seconds or instants - really matter.

It fouls Tristan's shot, as he turns to see what the racket is a few seconds before Arthur hears it.

It steals his momentum, to come under the scrutiny of his commanding officer while on such a - suddenly - foolish feeling errand. What really could knights in training - human or centaur - be expected to do with a helpless, orphaned bird?

"What is it, Galahad?" Arthur asks gently. Tristan's dark eyes are also on him, and he takes a deep breath, supposing he has come this far. He must present his foolish compassion for his commander to reprimand.

He reveals the chick in his hands, and the sudden light gains him a few moments of silence from the bird.

"It's abandoned," He explains, lamely. He waits to be told that it was as it should be; knights are not mother hens.

Arthur's features are writ with surprise, and not reprimand.

After a glance at Arthur, Tristan slings the bow over his shoulder and comes to inspect the now quiet hatchling. It turns dark eyes up toward Tristan, and Galahad realizes he really isn't sure what he expected Tristan to do. There is something in the hawk of a kindred wildness, perhaps.

"What will you do with it?" Tristan asks.

"Do you know what they eat?" Galahad asks, suddenly feeling the immense responsibility, "Can you take it?"

Tristan reaches, and Galahad surrenders the bird carefully into his possession. It feels as if a massive weight has left him, though he is still fiercely determined to help it.

"Mice, rats, rabbits," Tristan lists, carefully examining the bird as Galahad had done.

He is not careful enough, and the small, sharp beak catches at Tristan's fingertip hard enough to draw blood.

He does not react to the sting save to pull his hand away, easing his tongue against the hurt and smiling tolerantly.

"Compassion is a value in a knight," Arthur tells Galahad, clapping him on the shoulder. "You've done well. Do not forget your compassion."

“You’re dismissed,” Arthur adds, to Tristan. The centaur is already moving away, and he and Galahad share a brief smile of conspiracy before Arthur leaves them both to the mercies of the tiny creature. 

-


	6. Day Fifty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They march north, in strength. Their instructors say they are trained, and it is true that they can swing axes and shoot bows.
> 
> They are nearly forty, centaurs and men marching together for their post at the wall. They will learn the rest on their feet - shod and unshod.
> 
> For all this - uncertainty and unquestionable danger - they are in high spirits. For now, south of the wall, they are confident.

They march north, in strength. Their instructors say they are trained, and it is true that they can swing axes and shoot bows.

They are nearly forty, centaurs and men marching together for their post at the wall. They will learn the rest on their feet - shod and unshod.

For all this - uncertainty and unquestionable danger - they are in high spirits. For now, south of the wall, they are confident.

They are all of them young. Fifteen years does not yet seem like a lifetime, though for many it is all the life they have known.

For some, it will be more time than they have left.

The hawk has taken an affection to him, and Galahad also, he allows. He had proven dedicated enough to capture dead mice from cats, to hunt rabbits and help Tristan to cut them small enough.

Against bets, guesses, and odds, the bird has survived. Tristan hopes it is an omen.

He hopes, with his hooves sinking into the mud churned up by those moving before him, that Conseca has luck to spare for them.

Casting an eye back along the column, he finds an encouraging mix of men and centaurs. Lancelot rides as if he were half horse himself, and makes himself welcome among the centaur. Galahad, too, is curious - and Bruin, Morholt, Bedivere - all willing to accept that centaurs were as much knights as the Sarmatians. 

There are still a core of proud men, needing something to hold some elevation within this Empire that would thus use them.

They will soon learn to accept, Tristan thinks, what friendships were offered here - far from home and Rome and family.

He steps out of line to answer a call of nature, bracing his back legs away from the splash. 

Galahad's gray gelding takes the same cue.

"You're a bad influence," Galahad calls across the line of riding knights.

"You did not say that about your archery," Tristan reminds.

Some stare - Arthur has done his best to try and impress a man's idea of politeness into the centaur. Tristan has simply embraced the challenge of teaching a centaur’s practicality to the men.

"I owe as much to the instructor," Galahad begins to answer.

Something catches Tristan's ear - beneath the merry chatter of the column, beneath Galahad expanding on the exact nature of Tristan's usefulness as a teacher and the splash of urine against the ground. 

Some dissonance in the thick copse of trees to their left. It snags into the weave of his awareness like the tip of a knife parting fabric. A sudden discord in his awareness of the world around him.

Conseca makes a low, thin noise and springs from her perch on his withers and into flight.

"- _and_ 'aim for the target' is not actually helpful," Galahad concludes, his voice trailing away as he notices Tristan's distraction.

Tristan gives himself a shake and looks toward the source of the wrongness. It is no particular sound that has caught his attention but a sudden lack - no crickets shrill their evening songs, no birds.

Just wind and trees.

"Tristan what are you looking at?" Galahad asks, his tone dropping to worry.

The sun is setting behind the hills that flank them, and its harsh, red light makes it difficult to look into the hard shadows between the trees.

Tristan shifts his weight, lifting a hand to shield his eyes, seeing - he does not quite know what. A bright glint, reflected light from within the trees.

He startles, and it's that animal instinct that saves him, an arrow flying past so near that the wind of it breathes against his skin.

"Ride!" Tristan shouts, unslinging his own bow. Arthur glances back and then repeats the order, seeing the direction of Tristan's attention.

"Ride, Ride!" the shout relays down the line as arrows begin to fly down on them.

Tristan shifts his weight to dodge another shot, and then the young legion is in flight, horses squealing and men shouting.

Through the trees he sees only flashes of blue painted flesh and the impression of milling bodies. He had foiled their attacks, whatever their plans had been.

Tristan sights along his arrow, following the path of an emerging shot back to the shooter and lets fly.

He does not stay still to ascertain if it hits. He can hear men roaring challenges over the thundering of hooves, one scratchy voice raising above the rest.

"Rus!"

Everything seems to be happening at once, arrows flying into scrambling men. At the edge of his field of vision, two figures are springing forward toward the tree line, shouting and cursing. A handful of brothers break from the line, parting around Tristan and drawing their swords to join the foolishly brave pair..

"No!" Arthur's voice.

A shrieking, injured horse and the sound of stumbling hooves. Tristan turns back, somehow certain it is Galahad's horse who has fallen. The gelding streaks by in a disarray, head high and mouth trailing foam. One flank is bloodied. The horses are only as trained for war as the boys, and perhaps wiser to run from pain rather than toward it.

Tristan forces his way through the tail end of the column, careful of his hard, sharp hooves - but not so much of his bulk. He lets them worry that he might trample them so they move more quickly from his path.

"Galahad?"

A motion near the ground. Tristan breaks through the retreating column and finds Galahad dazed on the ground. Thrown, but otherwise unhurt. 

He blocks the line of sight with his body, and reaches down, crouching low on his knees when Galahad does not reach up to take his hand.

Getting back up with the extra weight, one of Galahad's arms pulled over Tristan's shoulders gracelessly, proves difficult. It throws Tristan's center of balance off further than he had guessed.

It does not help that Galahad hangs like a sack of heavy grain, unconscious and uncoordinated.

Tristan settles for half dragging, half heaving him over his withers.

"Don't make a habit of it," he sighs, eyes on the writhing, blue tinted shadows in the woods.

He glances back and finds that those who had been brave enough to charge the line were now circling back - Arthur leading them and some being carried by compatriots.

Dagonet gallops by with a dazed Bors holding tight to his bloodied sword and shrieking vengeance with blood streaming down his face.

Tristan sees no friendly bodies on the ground, however, and joins their retreat.

"Why have they come south of the wall?" Lancelot demands, as they rejoin the main body of men, heedless of who hears him demanding answers of their commander.

"If someone built a wall in your back yard," Gawain answers, shouting over the sounds of hooves. "Wouldn't you be sure to know what went on behind it?"

Galahad shifts, and then claws for a more secure hold, sinking his fingers into the leather straps that hold Tristan's packs in place.

"Who taught you to ride?" Tristan asks once he has righted himself, enduring the jostling he must feel with no saddle to hold him.

"Who taught you to _run?_ " Galahad hisses in answer, holding on where he finds anything to grab.

Tristan laughs in spite of himself, his pulse quick with the thrill of living. It is their first taste of victory.


	7. Day One Ninety

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Tristan, we learned something today," Galahad says.
> 
> The centaur is only listening with half an ear, his eyes on the sky where Conseca is flying with wide-spread wings, riding the current.
> 
> Galahad wonders if centaurs long to fly as much as men do.
> 
> "I'd like to try it," Galahad continues, feeling a certain mischief overtake him.

Their first conflict has left them closer-knit. Their second and third skirmishes have solidified them. Galahad sees that even Bors has warmed, grateful to Dagonet for pulling him from that first danger. Not before both had bloodied their weapons in combat.

"Tristan, we learned something today," Galahad says.

The centaur is only listening with half an ear, his eyes on the sky where Conseca is flying with wide-spread wings, riding the current.

Galahad wonders if centaurs long to fly as much as men do.

"I'd like to try it," Galahad continues, feeling a certain mischief overtake him.

"What was it?" Tristan asks, without lowering his gaze. He lifts his hand to call the bird back, beginning to signal with a sharp whistle. 

"Hold still," Galahad murmurs, mischief and daring up in his blood. 

Tristan obliges him only because he is barely paying attention. Galahad takes several steps back, gathering distance.

His running footsteps seem to strike Tristan's awareness at the last second. Galahad gets so far as to plant both his hands on Tristan's croup, over his tail, and begins to heave himself up.

He had seen the other Sarmatians do it today - his own mount had been too tall to practice on. 

None of the other horses had startled as Tristan does, and the support drops from beneath his hands as Tristan's legs fold under him, dropping his hindquarters as if he were under attack. Tristan lurches forward like a horse with a spook, dropping Galahad into the dirt. He rounds on a heel to look back at his sprawled companion with consternation, once he's figured out Galahad's intent.

Galahad struggles to pull air for a few minutes, but when he can breathe again, he laughs - at his own boldness, at the frank disbelief - but not anger or indignity - in Tristan's eyes.

After a moment it fades to amusement and Tristan reaches down, tail swishing, to help Galahad back to his feet.

"You're supposed to hold still," Galahad suggests.

"That's my ass you keep taking liberties with," Tristan tells Galahad, hoisting him to his feet. "You'd hardly like it if I repaid the favor."

About to laugh it off, the thought finally strikes Galahad, leaving him considering the statement. The swishing tail and hard hooves that Galahad once had such a hard time equating with Tristan _are_ his.

Equivalent, perhaps, in sensitivity to Galahad's own anatomy - thought Tristan wears his bare save for the dappled fur and ruck harness for his gear; packs, knives now, a bow and quiver.

Arthur did not make pack animals of his knights, or so he had insisted.

"I did not think of it that way," Galahad admits in partial apology. Once on his feet, he dusts himself off. "Why didn't you protest before?"

Tristan's tail flicks but he does not fidget. Galahad has learned to read his moods even when his face is impassive, as it often is.

"What made you think that would work?" Tristan asks instead, and it is a question with a number of answers. Galahad is ready for it, however.

"I trust you," Galahad answers. In fact, Tristan had been the first in his mind when Lancelot had spoken of trust as the core of the exercise.

Tristan's tail flicks, sensing that he has been given the sweeter part of the answer first and he does not reach to accept it until he sees what Galahad holds in his other hand.

"And," Galahad continues, feeling much like a boy holding out an apple in one hand and hiding a bridle behind his back. "You are two hands shorter than my horse."

Tristan stares at him in a long moment of disbelief, at the admission of comfort and allowance for the fact that they were both nearer boys than men. At the implication of friendship in the words.

He sighs, and Galahad hopes he has not overstepped.

After a moment, however, Tristan chuckles and smiles.

"And if I allow this?" he asks.

"I will be grateful for the practice," Galahad says, with an appropriately appreciative tone. "And less likely to maroon myself in combat, requiring rescue."

Tristan sighs, nearly a pout of his full lips, as he considers. Then, he simply turns, offering Galahad his target, unhindered.

Galahad backs up for his running start, uncertain if he is heading into a trap, but trusting Tristan to leave him with no lasting harm; even if he’s about to get dropped into the dirt again as a lesson.

This time, Tristan's back half does not buckle under, and Galahad hoists himself over his croup and up onto his back. It is not so hard as he thought it would be, smooth and easy with a shorter target.

Galahad smiles, both at his initial failure and his success. Tristan glances back over his shoulder, eying Galahad sidelong.

Then he gives one playful hop with all four legs, enough to show he isn't above - Galahad laughs, scrambling to hold on - a little 'horseplay'.

Galahad finds himself with two handfuls of Tristan's cuirass, just to keep his seat. But he does, and for the moment they are just still, Galahad enjoying the vantage point over Tristan's shoulder, and then following his gaze up.

Overhead the hawk wheels, wings stretched wide.

"Tristan?" Galahad asks, after a moment. "Why did you stop to help me?"

"You asked," Tristan answers, distantly.

"Not today," Galahad answers. "When the Woads attacked."

He feels Tristan shift, the motion translating through his back and Galahad's hips, along his own spine in an easy motion.

"Do you not stop for your fallen brothers?" Tristan asks.

"We were only just barely brothers," Galahad starts, but gets no immediate answer.

It leaves him to think on the narrowness of the answer, on how small a world he had come from. He does not know if he truly likes how big his world has become.

But the brotherhood, _that_ he has learned to value.

"You stopped for me twice now," Galahad says, finally. "I promise I will always go back for you."

Tristan doesn't answer, but Galahad can feel the ease in him as he whistles Conseca back to his hand, offering a bloody treat for her reward.


	8. Year Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first they bury is a centaur - a larger target in melee, and with weaknesses to exploit if one could get close enough. 
> 
> The hole is large and the knights who surround it are truly knights now, unsegregated within or without.
> 
> "Don't wait for us, brother," Bors growls at the mound - he still bears the scar of his first encounter on his scalp. "We've thirteen years yet to hold this godforsaken corner of Rome's asshole."

The first they bury is a centaur - a larger target in melee, and with weaknesses to exploit if one could get close enough. 

The hole is large and the knights who surround it are truly knights now, unsegregated within or without.

"Don't wait for us, brother," Bors growls at the mound - he still bears the scar of his first encounter on his scalp. "We've thirteen years yet to hold this godforsaken corner of Rome's asshole."

"Bors," Dagonet says. It is all he needs to. They are friends by blood and battle, inseparable.

Bors relents his angry tirade, and reaches up to thump his companion on his glossy bay shoulder, the nearer one.

"Come and drink you great beast. You're the only one who can ever drink me drunk."

Arthur stands the longest, his hands on the sword left standing where its owner no longer can. Tristan stays, too, long enough to see Arthur fold his knees slowly and sink to the earth.

Calling out to his god for mercy and guidance.

Tristan wonders if any god is truly great enough to hear them, so far as they are from Rome.

The only ones granting favors seem to be painted as blue as their subjects. That Merlin - his magic allowing the Woads to slip unseen, unheard, as silent as the woods themselves.

"...proba me domine et tempta me ura renes meos et cor meum..."

Arthur's voice has a steady cadence, a quiet and even determination that borders on bitterness so that it does not waver into sadness.

"...quionium misericordie tua ante oculos meos est et conplacui in veretate tua."

Tristan looks down at the grave, and at the green grassy hillside surrounding it, and a shiver passes through him, trembling beneath the whole length and breadth of his skin as if to rid him of an army of flies settling on his flanks.

"Non sedi cum concilio vanitatis et cum inqua gerentibus non introibo."

They are standing in a graveyard, as yet unfilled, but the ground is calling up to him and his hooves seem to sink into the soft ground, treacherous and welcoming.

"Ovidi ecclisiam malignantium et cum impiis non sedebo."

The rapid pace of Tristan's repeating hoofbeats does not interrupt the cadence of Arthur's prayer.

He runs until he no longer feels hungry ground beneath him, until his hooves hammer sharp, hollow sounds on Roman cobblestones.

It is not fear of his own death that drives him, but the fear of being the last. Of being still and stuck, lost forever in some unknown place.

He resolves to know it, all of it, so that it can no longer own him.

"Tristan?"

It is not the voice he wants to hear, but he turns anyway, wheeling into the motion without coming to a stop.

Lancelot sits mounted on his dark steed, eyes angry.

"Where are you going?" 

Tristan circles him to keep his momentum, to keep from going too still.

"To scout," Tristan answers, though the lie rings false - even to him.

"Tristan," Lancelot tries, but he does not want to hear it.

He turns on his heel and springs away, running hard until he outpaces Lancelot's pursuit, faster even than Lancelot can be when he put his mind to it. It feels better to run than to listen, until his lungs burn with the need for air and his muscles shake with exhaustion. 

He only stops at last when he finds himself stumbling dangerously.

He is alone.

Free.

Yet, even the open air and bright sky cannot soothe him - some burr, some sharp needle has gone into his awareness that for many of them, this is all that is left.

To be buried and mourned.

This is not the life he had envisioned with a boy's mind and a boy's practicality of how things were. Perhaps, no one could ever imagine the future with true clarity. He had hardly expected glory in the way tales promised - after all, as often as they were wizened teachers, centaurs were loathed, lecherous monsters in the old Greek stories.

Neither had he expected family, however, brothers as he had never known. The bonds of herd that built themselves between his kind when they were young. Tristan had not thought to know them, born out of phase as he had been.

Here, in this angry, beautiful land that so hated them, he had found it at last.

With it, he would learn loss, dragged earthbound when he had always dreamt himself wings.

He settles in the deep green shade of an old tree, curled against the sheltering roots, content to let shadow further dapple his hide while he recovers his breath and focuses on becoming still again.

He watches shadows move through the trees and thinks of the Woads, ill-content to stay behind their wall and accept what had been left for them.

Lucky, those that had not been trod to heel, or half Tristan's brothers might be blue as well. 

It is a sobering thought.

He hears the sounds of the approaching horses before he sees them, as ever. Two riders and a centaur, by the jingling of tack and number of footfalls. Lancelot had sought reinforcement - wiser to go in groups now, even behind the wall. The Woads are nimble and careful climbers, and there are too few knights and soldiers to spare to guard the whole length of it.

The knights must guard the roads instead, slowly giving back territory they no longer dare go into unprepared.

"If he does not want to be found," Galahad's voice, with conviction, "we won't find him."

"He'd best hope the Woads don't either," Lancelot answers, sharp. He is angry to be eluded, a sting to his pride as a rider.

"He has gone countless times here and often beyond the wall - at your orders, betimes." The last voice is Gawain's.

"But there was no order this time," Lancelot affirms. "Desertion is a crime-"

"He'll come back to us," Galahad answers, angry enough to interrupt even the second in command.

"How are you so sure?" Lancelot asks, a touch of anger in his own voice. He has never made any special effort to know Tristan - finding him the wildest of the legion, the least tame.

"He's my friend, Lancelot. As you are. He's our brother."

They are very near now. Tristan does not move - he knows that they will be seeking a standing target and a moving one. He is well enough hidden that stillness and their distraction might prove to be camouflage enough.

"Have some faith, Lancelot," Gawain assures him. "He has just grown tired of the shining star of your face - we all must stop to rest our eyes sometimes."

Galahad chuckles; Gawain laughs at his own joke, but Lancelot will not be lured into their play.

"Here are his tracks."

"Or our own, who knows what circles we're riding in."

"A single set, and not barefoot men."

" _They'll_ come behind us, as ever."

Tristan finds his peace shattered by their noisy search - if there _were_ any Woads, certainly the three knights have called loud and clear to their attention.

He waits for his brothers to pass - so near they need only look down to see him - before he unfolds himself carefully to his feet. He stalks them quietly, careful of his every step and silent as the great cats that roamed the land he'd grown up in.

"Bors' girl has gone big in the belly," Gawain is saying, as if they are out for a stroll. He is prone to chatter - on any subject - when he feels his own nerves. 

"Will he finally marry her?" Tristan asks, stepping in next to Galahad.

Galahad is the only one not to startle and jump, and he feels a certain satisfaction at it, even though he knows Lancelot will lecture him all the way home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Arthur's prayer in this is the 24th psalm.


	9. Year Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Though there are still thirty eight seats, the knights never change the places they occupy even as the gaps at the great round table Arthur had commissioned grow more numerous. 
> 
> The holes are there as those in a well-worn tunic, so long extant that they have grown soft and are an awareness but not an acute one. It leaves a mark on the skin to remember them by.
> 
> Galahad does not look too long at them, with the reassuring bulk of Tristan on his left, and the solid mass of men on his right.
> 
> "Let us never forget our brothers," Arthur says, raising his glass.

Though there are still thirty eight seats, the knights never change the places they occupy even as the gaps at the great round table Arthur had commissioned grow more numerous. 

The holes are there as those in a well-worn tunic, so long extant that they have grown soft and are an awareness but not an acute one. It leaves a mark on the skin to remember them by.

Galahad does not look too long at them, with the reassuring bulk of Tristan on his left, and the solid mass of men on his right.

"Let us never forget our brothers," Arthur says, raising his glass.

None have.

Though they drink somber, the solstice is on them and celebration. They are victorious, having cleared the long trade road from the coast to the wall, for those who dared venture beyond to make fortunes with what homesteads and civilized farmers they could find.

They spread to the far corners of their mile fort, and the small town that has grown up within the walls. 

Galahad drinks until his head is spinning with it, determined to match Gawain at his cups, though he does not have any advantage save the knowledge that they have nowhere to be in the morning or the days to come. 

Arthur does not curb them at this, thought all have learned - through stripes on their own hide or the misfortunes of others - not to report for duty impaired. For himself, Arthur takes nothing to excess. He is drunk on his dream of Rome and filled to fullness by faith.

Lancelot stalks him with burning, envious eyes as Galahad watches, taking another cup. When he leans back his vision is rounded at the edges, and his back meets something soft but solid. 

"What do they argue about so often?" he asks Tristan.

"Can you find a target?" the centaur responds, bringing up an old game between them.

Galahad finds a knife on his person - he has not taken up collecting them from defeated enemies as Tristan has, but carries enough for this anyway. 

He picks a beam, one of the supports for a covered fodder deposit, and does not aim so long his intoxication will foul his well trained instincts.

It lands center, but low.

"Is he jealous?" Galahad continues.

"Arthur finds more comfort in faith than what Lancelot has found in anything he's ever touched," Tristan observes, with a scout’s vision.

Galahad feels the motion of throwing go through the contact he has with Tristan, and his dark handled knife lands higher, on target and on center.

Galahad ponders the statement, lifting his cup to give it to Tristan - old rules that the winner drank. It would take more than his cup to level the field.

"Lancelot is not the only one who feels more fear than comfort."

Tristan snorts.

Galahad throws. His knife lands in the middle of the two gone before.

"Lancelot is given to believe he is very important," Tristan answers. "It must seem so, with his head jammed so far up his own asshole."

Galahad laughs, too drunk to know better. Tristan is warm against his back, unusually talkative without any eyes on him and only Galahad's attention.

Across the yard Dagonet and Bors entertain the hardy, wobbling toddler Bors had sired. The boy hangs, delighted, from the centaurs cropped tail until Dagonet gives in and drops down to his knees to allow the child to scramble over him proper. 

The boy is as taken with Dagonet as his father, the pair inseparable in combat since that first skirmish with the Woads had proven that men and centaur could compliment each other in attitude no matter how alien they were in anatomy.

"Did you think it would be like this?" Galahad asks, glancing up.

Tristan drinks, watching and visualizing his aim over the edge of the cup.

"No," he admits.

The knife flicks from his fingers and knocks Galahad's free, but does not stick. He surrenders the cup to Galahad nearly empty.

"Not when I marched away from home, and not when I learned we would be knights rather than cavalry of our own order," he finishes.

"We were told you were monsters," Galahad says, reaching out to set the cup aside.

Tristan takes it. It vanishes into one of the pouches slung at his withers after a brief inspection for dregs.

"We were taught you were murderers," he answers. "War makes its own truths between enemies."

Galahad tips his head in acknowledgment, and his vision swims. His last knife misses the target.

Tristan does not even bother to throw.

"Lean on me," he suggests, when Galahad stumbles trying to find his own feet to sleep off his drunk.

Galahad does, as he often has, tangling his hands into the straps that hold Tristan's kit in place with one arm slung over the low part of his back.

"Why are we fighting, Tristan? Why are we dying?"

Tristan's tail sweeps behind them, and it touches Galahad's back, softer than the times it has lashed him in fond irritation. He does not answer.

Now that they are knights, they do not sleep in tents or stables. They quarter themselves as they see fit - or share with women or each other as they saw fit.

Galahad's own are not spacious, but the door admits Tristan. Galahad stops at it, and spares a wavering glance at the middens that Tristan understands implicitly.

"How long," Galahad asks, with a spark of old curiosity as they both empty their bladders in brotherly solidarity. "Did it take Arthur to convince you not to piss where you pleased?"

"He has only convinced me not to piss where he can see," Tristan admits, wryly.

Galahad laughs, and it seizes hold of him and keeps.

He does not stop until he has settled in his own bed, chuckling and refusing to fully untangle his fingers from Tristan's gear until the other gives in and settles to sleep laying down with his long limbs tucked under him, catlike.

Galahad sleeps long and does not dream, nor curse Tristan when he wakes in the morning and trips over the tangle of his legs on the floor on his way for water to soothe his pounding head.


	10. Year Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Arthur sent you," Tristan guesses.
> 
> Galahad holds aloft a bucket of soapy water in one hand, and in the other, combs and brushes from his own curry kit.

"Arthur sent you," Tristan guesses.

Galahad holds aloft a bucket of soapy water in one hand, and in the other, combs and brushes from his own curry kit.

"He asked me," Galahad admits. "Before you grow a forest fit for Woads to hide in your tail, Tristan."

He gives it an irritated swish and considers his friend, but finds he does not feel betrayed.

"You may be a ghost in the forest, Tristan," Galahad temporizes under the cool gaze Tristan presses upon him for the unspoken proposal. "But you would stand out in our lineup, and we are expected to impress the visiting consul."

Tristan does not relent.

"Please." Galahad says. "He does not want to have to reprimand you to a proper trim." 

It was true that for practicality, the others kept short hair and tails cropped straight just below the bone. It kept them from snagging and tangling as Tristan's clearly had.

Tristan is forced to admit he had been granted a certain leniency. He does not have to like that it has come to an end. 

"Our deeds do not impress enough? We have served our purpose."

Galahad sets the bucket down at his side anyway, taking the fact that Tristan has not moved away as all the permission he is likely to get.

"We must be pretty _and_ useful," Galahad answers, with just the right grudging tone.

"You and Lancelot serve that for our knights."

Galahad laughs.

"I will take the fact that you named me before Lancelot as a compliment."

He sets to work unfastening the straps of Tristan's harness with a practicality that suggest far more casualty than the idea implies to Tristan of being undressed by his fellow.

He supposes that to a man, letting his balls hang to air at all times must suggest that he is usually as good as naked anyway.

Still, he gives a shake when Galahad pulls the heavy harness off him, the sudden weightlessness a strange reminder of days when he had not needed to wear it at all.

"May I?" Galahad asks, but he waits no answer before upending half the bucket - _warm_ water at lest - over Tristan's back and tail.

It slides soapy and wet over his back and sides. Tristan supposes he need not answer.

"Will you paint my hooves black too?"

"Pink, if you do not cease whining."

It is not an idle threat. If Tristan did not sleep so soundly and trust the lessons in stealth he had imparted to his brother knight so implicitly, he would risk it.

Galahad is brisk but not rough. Beneath a coat of dust and mud and old sweat, he reveals gray flanks. 

"You're whiter than you were," he marvels, as if he was scrubbing the very dapples off of Tristan's hide. "Have you never been clean?"

"You're scrubbing too hard," Tristan answers, "washing the color out as you've done to your horse."

Galahad immediately eases back though Tristan had meant it only in jest.

"It's just that I'm older," Tristan assures him, smiling to see his friend so worried about injuring his durable hide.

"Will you be all white someday?"

"Never, if I can help it."

Water runs brown and then finally clear from his coat as Galahad works with the round brush to loosen dirt.

He saves the tangled mess of Tristan's tail for last, neither of them looking forward to the long process of untangling it.

"I hadn't thought about it like that," Galahad admits, of Tristan's fading spots. 

"If I am lucky enough to live, I may eventually match in hair and hide - pale gray."

Tristan has not ever previously considered it. The passing of time has both raced and dragged - from nights alone in the cold of winter to days of fighting and blood in the sunshine - but never seemed to accumulate.

"If you ever stop rolling in the mud," Galahad says, intruding on his thoughts.

He brushes a snag hard, and it pulls painfully, tearing a few strands of hair loose from Tristan's tail.

Tristan does not bother to argue that he has never _rolled_ in the mud. He does not need to - his exertions splash or smear him and the rain does not fall enough to do anything but spread it on his hide.

"You're envious of Dagonet, admit it," Galahad teases, easing a knot free with his fingers this time.

"Hardly."

It takes every ounce of willpower Tristan has to subvert his instinct to flick his tail out of Galahad's hands as he works burrs and twigs and snarls out of it.

A small pile of detritus accumulates at their feet.

Tristan notes that Galahad stands wisely to one side. Though Tristan has better control than to kick him, it keeps his toes safer from being accidentally stepped on. After a time, it becomes almost soothing. Strangely comforting, when all the snarls are gone and the brush slides easily through his tail. It's calming enough that he drifts until Galahad releases his tail and it swings strangely and feels heavy.

A glance back reveals the intricate braid it has been woven into. His agitated flick only thumps the tied ends solidly against his own side. He has to admit, it looks neater.

"I had - _have_ \- two sisters," Galahad explains his skill with a smile.

Tristan swishes his tail again and only stings his other flank for his effort. Galahad laughs at him.

"Only for one day, Tristan, then you can undo all I've done. Just help us give Arthur the good name he's given us."

"I haven't stopped you," Tristan answers.

"We're only half done," Galahad picks up the bucket, still half full of lukewarm water and the last surviving soap bubbles. 

"Half-?"

Galahad looks up at him pointedly, eyes running over Tristan's dirty face and unkempt hair.

Tristan resigns himself to a full bath then, unfastening and untying his armor. Galahad at least is not the sort to gloat.

And he does not want to explain pink-painted hooves to the consul.

-


	11. Year Seven - Winter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Are they coming?" Lancelot's voice is angry, ringing carelessly through the stables.
> 
> Galahad works the brush through his gelding’s coat and thinks that if they were, Rome would have sent them, and not a messenger.
> 
> "Lancelot," Arthur temporizes, his tone lower.

The snows come as early as October, freezing the streams in their beds and the shallow middens.

"Are they coming?" Lancelot's voice is angry, ringing carelessly through the stables.

Galahad works the brush through his gelding’s coat and thinks that if they were, Rome would have sent them, and not a messenger.

"Lancelot," Arthur temporizes, his tone lower.

"There are more empty seats than Knights, Arthur, and ever more Woads every day," Lancelot does not lower his voice. "If Rome does not want them to sit your round table instead of _us_ , Arthur-"

"We have been allotted nothing, Lancelot, nor have any of the other garrisons on the Wall," Arthur's tone is sharp, then. 

So there will be no new recruits to fill out the gaps, no young knights to ease the burden growing heavier on the shoulders of those who survive. Galahad feels his hopes sink, thinking of his dark-eyed brothers, tired and pale.

More swords planted in the ground than raised to fight, and not yet but half their term served. 

Lancelot's angry silence fills the space around them.

"I have written Pelagius," Arthur confesses, a rare revelation of his own burden.

"So he can _pray_ for us?" Lancelot scoffs.

"So he may intercede on our behalf where he can, Lancelot."

Arthur's voice is tired. He has asked nothing of his Knights he would not himself give to help cover their expanses of road and wall.

"Then let him send priests, if he must," Lancelot snaps, his tone helpless and angry. "They will be as ready as we were."

"Come and sit, Lancelot," Arthur tempts, softly.

Their voices move away, and Galahad realizes he has ceased tending his horse. He continues with disconsolate circles of brush over coat.

He wonders who next they will bury, if it will be Bors, brash and fearless in battle, or Tristan, or himself.

He allows that, were it Bors, there would be two funerals - for him and Dagonet. They had tied their futures together inseparably, or so it seemed. Bors' small army of children seemed nearly to consider the centaur a second father - as well as personal gymnasium.

Galahad allows that Tristan has as oft come to his rescue as his constant scouting allows. Perhaps they had a fate nearly as interlocked.

He lets the thought be a reassurance, brushing out his mount’s tail as he had once done for Tristan's.

-


	12. Year Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He rides beyond the wall, Arthur's best tactic to catch the Woads before they surmount it - as they seemed intent to do.
> 
> If it is quiet, lonely work, he keeps at least some company. For a time, when Mordair had been alive, they had scouted in pairs.
> 
> Now, Arthur allows that two were as likely to die as a single scout, and they cannot spare any others. Coneseca comes with him, wheeling overhead when it suits her or vanishing when she pleased.

He rides beyond the wall, Arthur's best tactic to catch the Woads before they surmount it - as they seemed intent to do.

If it is quiet, lonely work, he keeps at least some company. For a time, when Mordair had been alive, they had scouted in pairs.

Now, Arthur allows that two were as likely to die as a single scout, and they cannot spare any others. Coneseca comes with him, wheeling overhead when it suits her or vanishing when she pleased. 

It is company enough.

He moves as quietly through these woods as the blue men that still owned them. He has lost his fear of them - woods and Woads both. They are men, as he has seen spying on their camps and villages.

They eat and sing and love and rear children. They are proud of their freedom. They, too, hate the wall.

Three parties camp near it tonight. One plans a distraction for the men guarding it, and two will try to cross. Tristan supposes one may make it, even though the knights will be prepared. It is not as daring as they had once tried.

But they have not given up. By the same token, the knights will not - or cannot. The two forces were made to impact each other, boulders smashing against cliff sides and both left diminished.

Tristan turns for home, thinking of warmth and food and rest.

Of companionship in a friendly way. He has been long without. He does not crave it, as most centaurs do, but he has learned its value.

He is near enough to run for the wall when the Woads’ own scouts find him. He freezes still, and they do - two specters in blue to his in black and white. They are women, but they'll kill him anyway if they can. 

They know his dark eyes and silent steps are what plague their every effort at surprise.

They draw swords and he trusts to his own speed and flies, not so confident as to risk even injury when his brothers need his news. Some knights might live tonight, by his warning.

As he wheels, he feels something catch and give on the ground beneath his hoof. It coils around his ankle like a striking serpent and then pulls tight - nearly taking him off his feet as it cuts skin and fur and then grows taut.

What give had been in it vanishes, and Tristan is drawn up short.

He yanks, and feels the tether give only a little, and knows he must fight. 

The snare is a cruel thing, twisted wire meant for him and Tristan feels a brief, ferocious pride that he had given them so much trouble they wanted to trap him like a wolf.

He draws his own sword to fight, then, glad they did not carry bows. They are wise enough to come at him from both sides, but not fast enough to land any blows while he defends himself with his free hooves and sword both. 

His world narrows to small revolutions around a fixed point. His footsteps carve circles in the snow, before dredging up wet mud from beneath, sending spatters flying when he kicks out at them.

They are too smart for a quick fight, tiring him instead, harrying him whenever he seeks to get enough leverage to pull the stake up or his foot free. He avoids what he can, paries what he cannot, and tries not to feel the world contracting slowly around him.

His limbs grow heavy and tired, sweat forming and freezing against his skin. The Woad women loom, giving each other rests.

Somewhere in the quiet, cold moments between freezing breaths of air, survival reaches out to Tristan. It shatters the long-held resolution to his own fate.

The cable will not give before his ankle, but perhaps the stake will pull out of the ground before the limb severs. 

He throws his weight against it and feels the cruel wire slip tight, cutting skin and loosing blood. The bright sting of frigid air against the new wound, magnifying the dull ache with stinging cold.

One of the women rushes in, sensing his tactic. She is tired, hasty - meaning to finish him before he pulls free. He cuts the weapon from her hand, severing her fingers and sending her back clutching her injured hand to her chest and howling, wolflike. He yanks a dagger from his kit harness, and lets fly at the other Woad, feeling a small bright spark of malicious victory to see it sink into her chest beneath the collarbone.

All those years at games with his fellows.

He gives another full body yank on the snare holding his back left leg captive, rearing up and twisting until the stake gives and finally - with a nearly blissful lessening of pain - the wire loosens. 

Tristan thinks of his brothers again, and looks up to find all that's left of the remaining Woad is a trail of blood in the snow. 

It takes some doing to get hold of the trailing end of the wire, to cut it as short as he can manage - he cannot reach well enough and his fingers are not steady enough to pull the embedded wire free.

He looks up toward the wall, and begins to move, limping, slow. And as night comes on and adrenaline abandons him, the cold encroaches on his skin, freezing the sweat of his efforts.

-


	13. Year Nine and One Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Has he come?" Galahad asks, when Bors comes to take his place on the Wall watch.
> 
> "Have you seen the gates come open?" Bors answers, sharp. "D'you think we'd forget to tell you if he'd somehow grown wings from that hairy ass of his and flown over?"

"Has he come?" Galahad asks, when Bors comes to take his place on the Wall watch.

"Have you seen the gates come open?" Bors answers, sharp. "D'you think we'd forget to tell you if he'd somehow grown wings from that hairy ass of his and flown over?" 

Galahad sighs, worried. Tristan had never been gone so long past his return time before, always nearly on time, never perfectly so. Now, of course, Galahad fears for his friend. No matter how competent a woodsman, how skilled a shot or swordsman, he was one, alone out there. The very land is hostile around him.

"He's too smart to die out there, boy," Bors reassures him, perhaps as much himself.

"Then where is he?" Galahad asks, looking down. The country on the other side of the Wall has been denuded of trees, to give the wall a safe distance of view, to make climbing it more difficult. 

It leaves soft rolling hills of white, leading down to the distant edge of the forest, a stark land of brightness and shadow and the soft grays between. It reminds him of the dappling on Tristan's own flanks, fading ever so slowly away.

Galahad trains his eyes on the foreboding woods, for any sign of movement within. Any glimpse of hope.

There is only the blue-gray shadow between the trees, crawling forth onto the snow in front of them like ghosts driven before the sun. 

Galahad slides lower against the stone, feeling the cold of it sink into his sin - the cold of despair following it under. He looks at the shadows beneath the trees and calls out to the gods - to his own, to Arthur's, to any that would listen - for his friend's safe return.

Nothing answers. Bors claps him a ringing blow between the shoulders, jarring him from his thoughts. For a moment, as he moves to regard his fellow knight, something catches his eyes; some wrong shape mixed in beneath the trees at the edge of their marching line.

It snags in his attention and holds, and Galahad can't say why - even looking again, he can't be certain it is not just a high, unusual drift of snow. Something about the shape of it, of the dark brown heap in front of it - suggests more than a deadfall covered in snow. 

His eyes seem to detect a sign of bright red, nearly lost in the glare of the snow. Blood?

A brown shape untangles itself from it, unfurls wide wings and lifts upward, moving silently toward the trees.

"Bors," Galahad hisses, pointing.

"What?" Bors growls, trying to follow his indicating finger.

"There, under the tree line. Just there," Galahad urges.

Bors peers, squinting against the bright snow and leaning over the stone crenellation to try and see.

"Woods, boy. And snow."

"Bors, he's there. It's Tristan..."

He meets Bors' disbelief with what he knows is a wild-eyed look. Galahad knows he will sound desperate. 

"It's him, I'm sure. He needs help."

Bors shakes his head. "Could be a trap. If that unmoving lump is him, then he's already dead boy, and left to lure us toward a wood crawling with blue bastards."

"We can't just leave him-"

"Galahad," Bors says, trying to talk sense into him, to convince him of the foolishness of the quest.

Galahad turns, rushing to find Arthur - to beg or plead, whatever it takes.


	14. Year Nine and Three Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is the cold more than the injury, Galahad thinks, that has taken Tristan down so thoroughly. It had left him at the edge of the wood, a crumpled, dark shape in the snow covered fields that had so near matched his hide Galahad had only guessed at the location of his body. The conviction had come on him and refused to leave until he had roused and badgered Arthur into a rescue.
> 
> Galahad can't speak his volumes of relief that it would not now become a funeral.

It is the cold more than the injury, Galahad thinks, that has taken Tristan down so thoroughly. It had left him at the edge of the wood, a crumpled, dark shape in the snow covered fields that had so near matched his hide Galahad had only guessed at the location of his body. The conviction had come on him and refused to leave until he had roused and badgered Arthur into a rescue.

Galahad can't speak his volumes of relief that it would not now become a funeral.

"You shouldn't be on your feet," Galahad scolds, when he comes with the salve. The wire had cut clean to the bone, and the struggle had pulled some of the fine ankle bones out of alignment.

Galahad does not fondly remember the process of resetting them, of seeing Tristan in so much pain - though he had bore it as stoically as possible.

"The floor is hard," Tristan objects when Galahad stares pointedly at him - his weight held on three legs with the injured suspended.

"And cold," he finishes.

Galahad sighs. He admits that none of it looks as comfortable as a bed, but Galahad cannot imagine sleeping standing up, either. 

"I'm sure you've had enough of cold," Galahad allows, stayed from calling Tristan on his childish refusal by the memory of Tristan's nearly still body half buried in the snow.

Tristan shifts his weight and Galahad retrieves a blanket from the floor and throws it over Tristan's back. He draws it into place and gives Tristan an affectionate thump on his lower shoulder. 

"Enough cold," Tristan agrees. "Enough snow. Enough Woads."

He does not flinch when Galahad reaches for his injury. The joint is swollen and feels hot to the touch, the scabbing skin is angry and red where the fur has been cut away. It had not taken frostbite, by some miracle. Tristan eases the joint straight at the direction of Galahad's gentle touches.

"You have some luck," he decides at last, supposing that all signs were pointing to the foot healing well.

Tristan looks mildly amused, easing his weight back solidly onto his good legs. 

"Or horrific luck," Galahad continues. "Twice on the same leg."

"You came for me," Tristan says, breaking into Galahad's relieved chatter. There is a strange expression on Tristan's features - something open and unsubtle.

Gratitude, and he wears it openly and warmly, crowning Galahad with it as if it were a high honor he had received. 

Galahad hugs him, barely able to reach past his middle and get his arms comfortably around Tristan's waist, but he does it anyway, relief and amazement flooding him.

Tristan was here, alive, his brother, his friend.

"I said I would," Galahad reminds him. "I did not mean it only halfway."

"Lancelot said you were not to be appeased," Tristan continues, his arms settling around Galahad's shoulders. 

"My appeasement is here, you stubborn mule, standing on three legs instead of healing properly."

Tristan does not argue either accusation.

Galahad draws back, remembering, reaching into the bag at his hip and producing the last green apple he had saved from the batch becoming cider.

"This _is_ a bribe," he tells Tristan, offering the fruit. 

"And what are you coercing me into?" Tristan answers, his features returning to their usual serenity. His tail isn't lashing, however.

"I will make you a nice warm bed of blankets and soft straw," Galahad offers, "if you will use it."

"I would like to see you sleep on straw," Tristan answers, but it is not a no.

"If you insist," Galahad agrees, grinning to the challenge issued. He offers the apple again, to seal the bargain.

Tristan accepts it.

-

[End.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for coming along on this journey with me! A very special thanks to [Quedarius](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Quedarius/pseuds/Quedarius) for the super helpful beta work, and a THANK YOU to everyone who read, commented & encouraged me to continue. 
> 
> And look, I managed to write something short. Ish.

**Author's Note:**

> Like a total slacker, I realize that I have not mentioned my amazing Beta once in this fic. I have been trying to abstain from the crazy amounts of authors notes I tend to add and just let the cuteness stand on its own.
> 
> This piece in it's entirety is beta'd by the amazing Quedarius, (http://archiveofourown.org/users/Quedarius/pseuds/Quedarius ) who is very patient with me on a tight schedule, and whom I owe many beers.


End file.
